More than a million descendants of Spanish exiles or immigrants are processing their application for citizenship under the protection of the Democratic Memorandum Act in the State Department’s consular network, while another 1.3 million applications are submitted to hand in their documents, but are still unable to do so due to bureaucratic delays. Of the millions of files initiated, almost half were the result of relinquishing citizenship, although many are still waiting for registration to be formalized, while rejections amount to only 2% of the total.
These are the data managed by the General Council of the Spanish City Abroad (CGCEE), an advisory body to the administration that represents more than three million Spaniards residing abroad, and whose president, Violeta Alonso Pelaez, complained in statements to El Pais newspaper, to the government that is taking the necessary measures to prevent this torrent of requests from collapsing the consular network, composed of 178 offices, of which 86 are consulates general and consulates. The total number of people who want to access the new law, 2.3 million, multiplied by 4.5 the number reached with its predecessor, the Historical Memory Act of 2007: 503,439.
The additional eight-provision of the Memory of Democracy Act grants a two-year period, extendable to three years, to seek citizenship for all “born outside Spain of a father or mother, abuelo or abuela, who were originally raised in the Spanish language and who, as a result of suffering exile for reasons of political, ideological, belief, sexual orientation and identity, have lost or renounced Spanish nationality.” Likewise, it included those born abroad to Spanish mothers who lost their nationality due to marriage to foreigners before the Constitution entered into force, and older children of those whose nationality was recognized under the 2007 law, thus filling the loopholes left by the rule promoted by the Zapatero government.
The final deadline closed, after a corresponding extension, last October 21, with a number of requests, especially in recent months, that exceeded all expectations as well as the capacity of the Spanish consular network to respond to them. They had to make the interpretation of the law more flexible, so that the petitions of all those who asked to submit their documents remotely before the office closed would be accepted, but they have not been able to do so yet because they cannot reach the consulate. Sources familiar with the process estimate that, at the current rate, some descendants of the Spanish people will have to wait decades to see their wish fulfilled, and they will be more advanced and could die without seeing it.
More than 40% of the applications, about a million – taking into account that for many years they have not been able to submit their documents to the consulate, which is why the process has not officially started – come from Argentina. The Buenos Aires consulate alone has about 645,000 people; While the population of Cordoba is about 125,000 people. The next consulates that received the largest number of petitions were La Havana (350,000), Ciudad de Mexico (165,000), São Paulo (150,000), Miami (120,000) and Caracas (40,000, on a temporary basis). Son data from CGCEE, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to the petition that comes to the country.
Violeta Alonso considers it “very positive” that her request has been allowed to be processed for all the people she requested within a period of time that cannot be answered due to lack of resources and reduces the need to adopt measures to speed up the procedures and prevent these processes from taking years. Among other things, the Presidency proposed that the more than 7,000 civil registries existing in Spain cooperate in registering new Spaniards, and that additional staff be hired or outsourced for those more mechanical tasks, such as digitizing documents or returning data. It is claimed that the digitization of the civil registry facilitates this cooperation between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice.
Alonso regrets that the huge amount of work resulting from the implementation of the Democratic Memory Law is now causing delays in the provision of other services, such as the registration of children born in Spain abroad. Far from responding to this temporary emergency, the CGCEE president warns that “there is a lack of redeployment of the Red Consulate”, as new Spaniards, once they have acquired citizenship, will request other services from the consulates, such as issuing passports, leaving births, marriages or deaths, etc. “It’s not just about expanding the factory, which also means that in many cases there is a lack of physical space,” says Subraya.
It is estimated that the number of Spanish residents abroad will rise from just over three million to around five. Some consular demarcations would double or triple the population present and, in Alonso’s opinion, require more personal territory with more extensive and modern infrastructure. Not counting the poor condition some consular offices are in.
The head of the CGCEE acknowledges that the State Department “possesses personal resources” to meet this extraordinary request, but says that they are “not sufficient and cannot be temporary.” In his opinion, the work of consulates could also relieve congestion if some unnecessary procedures were abolished, such as maintaining citizenship, which Spanish children must do to reach the majority of their lives. Some of these proposals will take Alonso to the meeting he plans to hold in the next few days with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, after agreeing to a previous offer at the end of October.
Diplomatic sources confirmed that in addition to the plan to modernize the consular network, allocated at 115 million euros, and the implementation of the consular identification number (NIC), which allows for speeding up procedures, the plan for the consulates most affected by the implementation of the Democratic Memory Law was strengthened by 150 squares, and the position of deputy consul was created in Buenos Aires, La Havana, or Mexico. However, the External Action Strategy, approved by the Council of Ministers last April, acknowledges that “despite the growth of Spanish nationality abroad, the resources of our consular offices have only changed in the last 20 years.”
A report by the Association of Spanish Diplomats (ADE), the mayor of the race, last year noted that the last official study revealed that 28 facilities were at full capacity, 68 had access problems at the entrance, 14 lacked fire protection systems and at least 17 were in a good state of preservation. “Many consular offices do not comply with Spanish safety and hygiene regulations at work,” he warned.
On the 12th of this month, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CSIF) reported a work accident at the São Paulo Consulate, where the negligence of entrance staff led to the injury of a worker, who had to be treated urgently, reporting the “sad, dangerous and neglected state of the building” which was immediately closed.